


Hold Your Ground

by d__T



Series: It's Not A Nightmare If You Don't Die [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Cryptids, Gore, Guns, Horror, POV Second Person, cryptids as anticap propaganda, no gender, reasonable negotiations with unreasonable beings, spooky things going crunch in the night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 08:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12077586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: Prompt as submitted to the cryptic-suggestions tumblr:It’s 11 o'clock at night and your favorite tv show just ended. Your about to go to bed when you look outside to your horse stable. They all look like they are freaking out and trying to get out of the stable. You also see what looks like a deer in front of your stable, but the deer is standing up. You grab the double barrel and head out to investigate. You thought your neighbor said the things usually never get this close to people’s homes.





	1. This is not the first night

**Author's Note:**

> non graphic animal death. non graphic gore. some body horror. I've never actually touched a horse in real life.

“Listen, okay,” You shout from the safety of your porch. There is light on you, and if you put your hand back you could feel the coarse and frayed metal mesh of the screen door. The light might keep you safe, the shotgun certainly won’t but it is better, you understand, to keep both hands on the shotgun. You keep the muzzle pointed at the ground. Non threatening. You inhale. You gotta keep going. “Listen, leave my horses alone! Go hunt an elk or something. They’re uh, meatier! I’m sure you can do it.”

_Please just leave my horses alone. The insurance is whispering about fraud now._

The thing that is not a deer looks at you. The darkness is profound. You look away. This was never your territory; you are a trespasser. Temporary.

 _Fragile_.

You take a step forward, boots soles clipping on the edge of the porch. Holding ground that was never yours to hold. The thing that is not a deer swallows, and wipes its lips, and chuckles. It does not have a face in any conventional sense of the word. Its ribs may gape open.

You keep the shotgun pointed at the ground. It is better to not be a threat.

The thing that is not a deer seems to wave before it melds back into the darkness like the way a watercolor artist places the idea of trees on top of the idea of trees on top of the idea of trees. You wait until your mind can be afraid of the coyotes again, until the shotgun feels more like a shotgun and less like a teddy-bear clutched by a child, until you can step back and touch the screen door.

You do not look away. Night spills between you and the stable, and you can not go there. Not yet. The horses will have to make it on their own. You open the door by grasping behind you, stepping backwards and locking each in front of you. It is better that way. To not break eye contact.

 _It is better that way_.


	2. This is the second day

The sun is not up, but you are. You did sleep, once the horses quieted, although not well. You must wait for the sun to leer over the horizon before you venture out and you would make breakfast but the smell of burned meat is coming in on the morning winds. The rank smell comes from the next farm upwind; a barn fire occurred last month or maybe an eon ago and you’re thankful that only the smell and the image of the black plume staining the sky that ugly morning haunts you. Thankful that you were spared the screams of horses dying.

 _You have enough of your own_.

The fire department said they couldn’t save the barn, the animals; they hadn’t trucked in enough water and the well was dry. You find granola and eat that because it is important to eat but the crunching in your head falls quiet under your thoughts. You think about the empty cisterns, the dry rain barrels, the damp silt at the bottom of your well. Time to call the water trucks again, but you can’t afford that (but not in the same way you can’t afford to have the well dug out).

 _Again_.

You think about the housing developers hovering around the burned barn like flies around a corpse the vultures have given up. You know what happened there.

 _Arson_.  _To bring light into the darkness and drive demons out._

The shotgun mocks you from beside the door. No need for it now. You put your mug in the dry sink, tuck jeans into boots, sleeves into gloves; and head out into the bloody morning light.

The barn has two doors. You open both from the outside, carefully traversing between them only in the sunlight. The horses are wildly quiet when you finally enter the barn. They are afraid. Of you, of the light, of the darkness. Skin and bone and anxiety. You are too.

One by one, you put blinders on the horses and lead them out to the far pasture. You step carefully around the dark stains on the cracked barn floor, and so do they. It is better to not touch.

All but one horse. It lies on its side in the straw of its stall. Marks and divots in the wood of the walls from where it thrashed out. Ribs gaping open. Hollowed out from the inside. Black and dark in a way that death isn’t.

Horses are about 1000 pounds. You get the tractor.


	3. Goodnight, Friend

That night you wait for dark on the edge of the porch. There’s a mug of overbrewed coffee in your hand and the shotgun rests across your lap. It’s a long time between the dregs of daylight and the darkness of night and by the time night truly hits, you’ve been seeing things for hours. This thing that is not a deer is hard to mistake for anything else, though.

You shout at it. “AY!”

Got it. It swivels to look at you. You got one shot at this.

“Listen,” you say. "About last month. I know why that barn was burned. But haunting me and the other farms ain’t gonna keep the developers away. That’s what you want, right? You gotta haunt them directly. Otherwise it won’t work.”

It stares at you. The edges of its ribs flex like it breathes. You are glad you are already sitting down.

“You keep killing my horses, I’ll have to move out. Where will you be then? Skulking around housing developments?”

It pulls its pretense back from the barn doors through which it had been sliding. You dare not breathe a sigh of relief. It looks at you some more, and then leaves.

You inhale at long last, cool dark night filling your lungs. 


	4. Good morning

You’ve got some theories about those murders, but you think you’re better off keeping them to yourself.

Nobody’d believe you anyhow.


End file.
